'Mom' and other matters

A longtime reader rounds up a number of recent normblog topics in this email, posted with his permission:

I've been following your posts on the ethics/religion thing and rather presumptuously would like to say that there is a further wrinkle that you haven't explored yet (I think). I agree with you that, although religion is prone to making otherwise good people do evil, this is a subset of a wider truth, which is that ideologies in general have this effect. However, one can go further. The statement Mick quoted was 'for good people to do bad things, that takes religion'. It would be just as true to say 'for bad people to become good people (or for bad people to do good things) takes religion too'. That is, it is not always the case, but happens often enough to be relevant. Examples are not hard to find.

I was born and brought up in Warwickshire, about twenty miles from Birmingham. We would never have used 'Mom' and I always assumed that the usage was purely American. In my family we say 'Mam' which is typically regarded as a Welsh usage, I believe, though we have no Welsh relations. Other people in my town use 'Mum', but there is no class element to it. So as far as your original query goes, there may have been a regional pattern, but there has been so much mobility (geographical and social) that it would be hard to trace today.

Is Kevin Spacey trying to be the Marlon Brando of his generation? As I recall Spacey is very fond of dying messily (Outbreak, Seven, LA Confidential, American Beauty) on film.

Ever since boycott itchiness broke out, I've been buying Israeli potatoes and oranges at every opportunity.

(Links added by me - NG.)